Doing What They Were Elected To Do

The denizens at the Washington Post must feel smugly confident in the Democrats' deathgrip on control of Congress for the foreseeable future, because they've run a story shining the proverbial 500-kilowatt klieg light on what a lazy, unproductive fiasco the 110th Congress has already become:

In the heady opening weeks of the 110th Congress, the Democrats' domestic agenda appeared to be flying through the Capitol: Homeland security upgrades, a higher minimum wage and student loan interest rate cuts all passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

But now that initial progress has foundered as Washington policymakers have been consumed with the debate over the Iraq war. Not a single priority on the Democrats' agenda has been enacted, and some in the party are growing nervous that the "do nothing" tag they slapped on Republicans last year could come back to haunt them.

Those nerves only become frayed if you believe that the Democrats were elected to be domestically productive. If, on the other hand, you believe that the Democrats were elected to hand victory in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism to Iran and al Qaeda by quitting Iraq, then the only thing you have to worry about is the chickenhearted fecklessness with which they have pursued that abominable end.

Hmmm; perhaps they do have reason to be concerned:

The "Six for '06" policy agenda on which Democrats campaigned last year was supposed to consist of low-hanging fruit, plucked and put in the basket to allow Congress to move on to tougher targets. House Democrats took just ten days to pass a minimum-wage increase, a bill to implement most of the homeland security recommendations of the September 11th commission, a measure allowing federal funding for stem cell research, another to cut student-loan rates, a bill allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare, and a rollback of tax breaks for oil and gas companies to finance alternative-energy research.

The Senate struck out on its own, with a broad overhaul of the rules on lobbying Congress.

Not one of those bills has been signed into law....[B]eyond a huge domestic spending bill that wrapped up work left undone by Republicans last year, the list of achievements is modest: a beefed-up board to oversee congressional pages in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal, and the renaming of six post offices, including one for Gerald R. Ford in Vail, CO, as well as two courthouses, including one for Rush Limbaugh Sr. in Cape Girardeau, MO.

Admiral Morrissey ridicules the Donk attempts to gussy up this pathetic performance. Much as I'd like to join him, I find myself concurring with Brother Meringoff that the four months of across-the-board Donk floundering isn't going to be enough by itself to put their freshly ill-gotten majorities in any serious jeopardy - particularly as the GOP is still in full disarray and retreat and in no condition to make a Newtian comeback.

Besides, they've got a coup de'tat to carry out. Finishing what Al Gore started is what they really believe they were elected to do.

And who knows - they just might be right.

But heaven help them if they're wrong - and Republicans if they can't take advantage of it.